Where Spear and Boar Meet Bat and Glove

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Most baseball players use their lockers for gear: mitts, bats and jerseys. Luke Scott, an outfielder and designated hitter with the Tampa Bay Rays, uses his to display a mounted boar’s head.

The boar is adorned with sunglasses and a trucker hat that reads “Jesus Is My Boss.” If anyone is curious enough to ask him about it — and many visitors are — Scott points to a six-foot, metal-tipped spear that stands next to a collection of dog tags and a coffee-table book on Scottish history.

“He was 12 yards away, and I just took the spear and threw it,” Scott said. “Splat! Right through him.”

In the deepest corner of the Rays’ clubhouse at Tropicana Field, Scott exercises the vast freedoms that Manager Joe Maddon affords the entire team. Maddon’s players can wear their baseball caps at funny angles. They can talk politics. They can stage impromptu dance parties.

Scott, 35, a nine-year major league veteran from DeLand, Fla., with a .249 batting average and nine home runs this season, has chosen to express himself in one of the more unusual ways: by fashioning his locker into a teetering tower of knickknacks.

“I wouldn’t even call it a locker,” outfielder Sam Fuld said. “It’s more like a city. It’s a little village.”

Scott, who went on the 15-day disabled list Saturday with back spasms, benefits by having two stalls: one for baseball and one for everything else. Still, he crams as much as humanly possible into both.

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Tampa Bay Rays player Luke Scott shows off the latest adornment for his locker, courtesy of a boar he speared.CreditMarc Topkin/Tampa Bay Times

There is a framed photograph from the film “Gladiator,” a gift from a friend who works at the stadium as a security guard. (“A fellow patriot,” Scott said.) There are a dozen bottles of nutritional supplements. (A fitness fanatic, Scott blamed a calf strain earlier this season on drinking too much alkaline water.) There is a blown-up cover from Time magazine of Osama bin Laden with a giant X through his face. (“Self-explanatory,” Scott said.)

There are flags and posters, a well-worn copy of the Bible and a Wolverine figurine still in the box. There is stuff beneath stuff piled atop more stuff.

“We probably spend more time in our lockers than we do at home,” Scott said. “So I just decided to bring a few things.”

Matt Silverman, the Rays’ president, said he had not seen the “most recent iteration” of Scott’s locker, which was an important distinction: the locker has grown like a Chia Pet.

“But that’s the individualism that Joe promotes,” Silverman said, “and that’s one of the reasons why players feel so comfortable here. You can be yourself.”

Maddon is not big on old-school baseball ritual. As a product of the 1960s and ’70s, Maddon considers himself “antiregulation.” In fact, he said, he has only a couple of rules. One is that he expects his players to run hard to first base. Another is that he wants his pitchers to work on their defense.

“I truly believe that the more freedom the players feel out there, the greater discipline and respect you’re going to get in return,” Maddon said. “If your employees have to come in and be concerned about a bunch of tedious nonsense, it’s going to prevent them from performing as well as they possibly can. God, if I added to the tediousness of the day to any of these guys, I’d feel awful.”

So it goes that the Rays’ clubhouse is baseball’s version of an art commune. Want to display your bobblehead collection? Go right ahead, Jose Molina. Feeling the urge to wear that sweet fedora? Knock yourself out, Fernando Rodney.

The players punctuate every victory with a clubhouse dance party, complete with strobe lights, during which someone — a player, a coach, an extended family member — invariably loses his shirt. And while most managers enforce a strict dress code when their teams travel to road games, Maddon stipulates only that his players “feel hot” with whatever they choose to wear on the plane. He emphasizes high character over coats and ties.

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Luke Scott had nine home runs and a .249 average this season before going on the disabled list.CreditChris O'Meara/Associated Press

“Joe’s like, ‘I don’t care how you look,’ ” outfielder Ben Zobrist said. “ ‘Do the right things, and people will embrace you.’ And that’s kind of how our team functions. You can celebrate and have a good time as long as you play well. When you’re not playing well, nobody’s going to want to see that.”

Players cited team chemistry as a huge component to the team’s success, although Tampa Bay has slumped lately, losing 7 of 10 games before rebounding with a win on Sunday. Still, the Rays, who have advanced to the playoffs three times in the last four seasons, remain in solid postseason contention, with a 70-52 record that had them percentage points ahead of the Oakland Athletics in the American League wild-card race. Maddon said it was important to him that his players felt at ease, and if that means outfitting a locker with the comforts of home — a boar’s head, an action figure — so be it. Scott has taken full advantage.

“He throws something new in there every week,” Zobrist said. “I think a lot of these things are designed to draw people into conversation. If you ask him about any one of those items, he would be glad to tell you all about it.”

A left-handed hitter, Scott has never been shy about sharing his right-tilting political views. He counted himself among those who called for President Obama to produce his birth certificate. He is a fierce advocate of gun rights. He tells anyone willing to listen that the country was founded on “Judeo-Christian principles.” One of his most prized possessions is a wooden cross painted in the style of an American flag. It occupies a prime piece of real estate in his locker. So does a copy of the Bill of Rights.

“We had to take our freedom,” he said. “At the end of the day, we shot the British.”

In his major league career, Scott has had good power — in his best season, with Baltimore in 2010, he hit 27 home runs and batted .284 in 447 at-bats — but more than anything, he has an engaging personality. About an hour before a recent home game against the San Francisco Giants, he spent 15 minutes signing autographs for children from foster homes who are part of the team’s Home Run Club. He let one young girl rebraid his rat tail.

“Everyone has a pretty good idea of how to handle themselves respectfully around here,” Scott said. “If someone’s going to be a jerk, then they’re going to show it and they’ll be on their way. You can identify that and say, Hey, go be a jerk somewhere else.”

Ryan Roberts, an infielder, occupied the adjacent locker until he was designated for assignment late last week. The contrast could not have been more striking. Unlike Scott, Roberts is a neat freak. Each batting glove and warm-up jersey had its spot.

Roberts said he had never seen anything quite like Scott’s locker, the contents of which have been known to spill into neighboring areas. Living next to the Jackson Pollock of clubhouse décor comes with its own set of hazards.

“I don’t mind, though,” Roberts said. “I like a lot of that same stuff.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: On Rays, Spear and Boar Meet Bat and Ball. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe